Huawei Mate 9 has a new member. The Huawei Mate 9 family has just grown with the announcement of the new Mate 9 member to join the Mate 9 flagship. It will be sold alongside the Mate 9 Porsche Design and Mate 9 Pro. Mate 9 has been officially unveiled via a silent listing it on their website.

Huawei is one of the largest cellphone manufacturers in China. It also has an extensive line of products which include cellphones and tablets. The Huawei Mate 9 is supposed to fill a niche for people who would like to buy the Mate 9 but either cannot afford the cost or who are content to work with less power.

Mate 9 Pro together with Mate 9 Porsche Design were announced last November 3 as the current flagship phone for Huawei. Mate 9 Porsche design has a 5.5-inch display, with a 12-megapixel camera, and HiSilicon Octa-Core.

Hardware Comparison

The Mate 9 Pro with its 5.5-inch display, 20-megapixel camera, and HiSilicon Kirin 960 are Huawei’s top of the line offering for this quarter. These two are the most powerful smartphones in the Mate series with the latest in technology and making use of the fastest processors. Mate 9 Lite was added to the list of the Mate’s family, but there are no details as to the price and its market release.

The Porsche inspired Mate 9, and the Mate 9 Pro are both on top of Huawei’s innovation while the Lite comes with mid-range specifications. It may have been quietly announced, but it is looking to have the same, if a little watered down promise, as the two more expensive brothers. The phone is said to have a curved glass similar to its brothers with a 5.5-inch display and 1080p touchscreen. It will still have the same Octa-core but a slightly lower chipset, instead of the Kirin 960, it will have Kirin 655 which is still pretty decent and will still be able to give the performance expected from a Mate.

There will be two versions of the Mate 9 Lite available, and one will have 3GB of RAM and 32GigaByte of storage, and another will have 4GB RAM and 64GB storage; these phones do not have expandable secondary memory. It doesn’t have a microSD card slot. When choosing the right phone, keep the storage in mind, because you will be stuck with it.

Not Leica Branded

Unlike the Pro and the Porsche design, the Mate 9 lite dual camera setup only has 12 + 2-megapixel primary camera and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. It is quite a step down since the other two has 20 MP and 12MP set up. Lite has lost its Leica branding. The dual camera setup still makes up for the difference in megapixel compared to the Mate 9 Lite since the secondary camera can be used for depth of field which you can manipulate to create that bokeh effect.

Losing the Leica cellphone camera branding is not a big loss unless you are in China. However, if you care very much for image quality using a cell phone camera, you might consider either the iPhone 7/iPhone 7 Plus, or the Google Pixel. Regarding image quality, the recently recalled Samsung S7 was among the top three on image quality for cell phone cameras.

It will have 3,340 mAh battery that will power your phone all throughout the day. It will also have a fingerprint scanner mounted on the back right below the dual camera set up, and will be available in three colors; Gold, Gray, and Silver but Huawei still has yet to announce when this new addition will be available in the market and how much it will set you back.

Hardware Summary

With the limited information from the Chinese company, here are some of the specifications about the Mate 9 Lite that is available out there:

The Mate 9 Lite has a 1080×1920 pixels resolution 5.50-inch display. It runs on a quad-core Kirin 655 processor with 3GB or 4GB RAM and a built-in 32GB or 64GB storage. It uses Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It has a dual nano SIM setup and is LTE 4G signal capable. For connectivity, it supports WiFi 802.2 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1mm. It is packed with a 3.5 mm audio jack. It uses a 12MP back-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera. The back facing camera has a dual camera configuration for better image capture. The Mate 9 Lite has an all metal casing which is light, yet sturdy and durable.

Yes, you read it right, unlike its two brothers Mate 9 Lite will be shipped out with Marshmallow as opposed to the most current Android 7.0 Nougat which his more powerful brothers have. It may be a big step down from the other previously released Mate 9s but we the night is still young, and the Lite will have its time under the microscope.

Although the Mate 9 has been introduced on the Huawei website, there is as yet no official statement about the price and availability. However, it seems to be a smaller and less powerful version of the Mate 9. It would most probably be sold at a lower price than the Mate 9.

There is already a large number of new phones, as well as new phone manufacturers. However, the large number of brands working in the market only means that there will be cut-throat competition within the price range.